Absorbent articles such as sanitary napkins, pantiliners and incontinent pads are devices that are typically worn in the crotch region of an undergarment. More specifically, sanitary napkins and pantiliners, for example, are worn by women in a pair of panties that is normally positioned between the wearer's legs, adjacent to the perineum area. Sanitary napkins and pantiliners are designed to absorb and retain body fluids or discharges (e.g., urine and menses) from the body of women and to prevent body and clothing from soiling. A wide variety of shapes and dimensions of sanitary napkins and pantiliners is currently used by women for the collection of body fluids.
Recent developments for disposable absorbent articles tend to focus on not only improvement of their product functions (e.g., superior absorbency, leakage protection and comfort) but their aesthetic features. This trend is particularly true for sanitary napkins and baby diapers. Such disposable absorbent articles are disclosed in, for example, WO 2004/006818 published on Jan. 24, 2004.
The aesthetic designs are typically implemented by printing or otherwise providing graphics on one (or more) of component members of those disposable absorbent articles (e.g., a backsheet). It is believed that such aesthetic features can provide emotional benefit to users, and thus, for example, in the case of sanitary napkins, may decrease users' melancholic mood during the menstruation period. In diaper embodiments, the graphics may provide the diaper wearer or caregiver with a pleasant or interesting design.
Some disposable absorbent articles (typically sanitary napkins and pantiliners) are folded and wrapped individually by a wrapper sheet. The materials of such wrapper members are typically polyethylene films or sometimes nonwoven materials which are not necessarily transparent. In some cases, this is intentional because consumers of such disposable absorbent articles do not want other people to notice or show they are carrying the articles, such as sanitary napkins. Also, in some cases, the wrapper sheet is used for disposal of the used product and, as such, a non-transparent wrapper can prevent the soiled article from being seen through the wrapper sheet. These needs, however, are generally contrary to desirability of showing the aesthetic features of disposable absorbent articles through the wrapper sheet.
Thus, it may be desirable to provide an individually packaged absorbent article that can show an aesthetic feature of the absorbent article through a wrapper sheet while controlling the visibility of a soiled absorbent article disposed in the wrapper sheet after use.